Contesting France

Contesting France reveals the untold role of intelligence in shaping American perceptions of and policy toward France between 1944 and 1947 a critical period of the early Cold War when many feared that French communists were poised to seize power. In doing so it exposes the prevailing narrative of French unreliability weakness and communist intrigue apparent in diplomatic dispatches and intelligence reports sent to the White House as both overblown and deeply contested. Likewise it shows that local political factions French intelligence and government ofcials colonial ofcers and various trans-national actors in imperial outposts and in the metropole sought access to US intelligence ofcials in a deliberate effort to shape US policy for their own political postwar agendas. Using extensive archival research in the United States and France Susan McCall Perlman sheds new light on the nexus between intelligence and policymaking in the immediate postwar era.